


Memory

by murphybabe



Category: The Professionals
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-06
Updated: 2012-09-06
Packaged: 2017-11-13 17:00:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murphybabe/pseuds/murphybabe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bodie finds a photo that Doyle doesn't want to talk about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memory

Doyle was annoyed.  Yet again there was a card from the Post Office through his letter box.  “We tried to deliver today but you were out”.  Of course he was bloody out, the Cow had had them chasing terrorists for the last three weeks.  He picked up the rest of his mail and sorted through it.  Bills, a bank statement, a letter from his mum.  He ripped the envelope open, scanning the contents as he moved through to the kitchen.

Bodie’s attention was caught by his partner’s sudden stillness.  He looked across curiously. 

“All right, mate?”  There was no response from his partner.

“Doyle?  You okay?”

“What?  Oh, yeah, sorry.  No, it’s just… unexpected.”

He stuffed the paper back into the envelope clumsily.  Bodie couldn’t be sure, from across the room, but he thought the other man’s hands were shaking.  The broad shoulders were tense, and Doyle suddenly looked – stricken.

Bodie’s curiosity, always strong, peaked and he craned his neck, trying to get a better look at the envelope.  Handwritten, ordinary white Basildon Bond – no clues there. 

“Bad news, sunshine?”

Doyle suddenly turned, his face bright.  “No, just me mam again.  You know what she’s like, Bodie.  Probably something Rita’s up to.”  He chattered away, fending off all Bodie’s subtle enquiries, and diverting his partner’s attention with an attack on his prowess with his latest girlfriend.

“Coming for a pint, then?”  Bodie was content to let it wait, confident that he could find out about the letter when Doyle had had a couple of drinks.

“Nah – didn’t I tell you?  Claire’s finishing her shift at 9, so I need to be washed and dressed by then.  She doesn’t like me sweaty.”

Bodie frowned, not sure he believed this.  Doyle held his gaze, and Bodie decided he could use this to his advantage.  A bit more verbal sparring, and he was out of the door and gone.  He headed for the pub, thinking.  If Doyle had a date that night, perhaps it was time for a bit of subtle B and E.  He passed the time with a mild flirtation with the barmaid, finished his pint and left the pub.

Bodie looked up at the windows of Doyle’s flat.  No lights showing, good.  He let himself in quietly, resetting the alarms and heading for the bedroom where he guessed Doyle would have stashed the letter.  Unless he’d destroyed it, in which case it might be in the kitchen bin.  He walked quietly across the darkened living room and nearly jumped out of his skin when a quiet voice said, “Bodie”.  He whirled round, to see a shape hunched in the corner of the settee, something white gleaming in its hand.

“Bloody hell, Doyle, you nearly gave me heart failure!”  Attack was always the best form of defence, so Bodie blustered on, hoping to avoid the difficult question about what he was doing here.  “What’re you doing, sitting here in the dark?”

“Not much.  Thinking.”

Bodie clicked the lamp on and Doyle flinched.  He’d been crying, his eyes red and swollen.  He turned away from his partner into the wall, and Bodie’s heart melted in his chest.

“Hey, come on, sunshine.  What’s up?  Ray?”

Silently, Doyle shook his head, unable to speak.  Bodie took a seat next to him and gestured at the thing in his hand.  “May I?”  A small nod.

The photograph was old, and bent at the corners.  Black and white, it still blazed off the paper, a brilliant moment captured in time.

Two boys, caught in the sunlight.  One was Doyle, face perfect, angelic in its purity, lit with a blinding smile.  The other boy was even more beautiful, blond, smooth, his half-naked body bent towards his friend.  Love streamed from the photograph, evident in their expressions, their closeness, their happiness.

Doyle’s hand was shaking again.  Bodie looked at him.  The contrast in the face before him and the face in the picture was strong.  Doyle – his Doyle – looked hungry, bitter and old.

He didn’t know what to say, what questions to ask that would unlock the deep unhappiness in front of him. 

“Who is he?”

“Was.”

“Was? What… what happened?”

“He died.”

“A… a friend?”

Silence.  Then a sigh. 

“Yeah.”

Bodie put a hand on his best friend’s knee.  Softly, “Tell me?”

Sitting in the darkened room, Doyle began to talk.  Brokenly at first, disjointedly, head lowered so Bodie could hardly make out the words, he described a childhood from a story book, full of love and friendship and happiness.  He told how he and Ciaran had spent their summer holidays rambling for miles in the Derbyshire countryside, catching random buses and heading for villages with odd names:  Hognaston, Youlgreave, Winster.  He spoke of clear streams, and fishing for minnows, and skinny dipping in the cold dew ponds, rolling dry on warm grass under a blue sky with skylarks ascending.  Roaming for miles, and home for tea and hot buttered pikelets, and late to bed and up with the dawn to do it all over again.

Gradually he began to smile as he spoke, and those expressive hands flew, describing how they’d had to run for a gate when a bull had charged them, or how they’d scrumped for apples and hidden, laired up on top of a stone outbuilding, until their groans from their acid stomach-ache had given them away and they were dragged home by the ears to loving disgrace.

Bodie drew on all his interrogation skills, gleaned over the years, to encourage his partner to talk.  He’d never encountered Doyle in this mood before, when all questions about his childhood were open for answering, and he found it hard to reconcile this Boys’ Own upbringing with the cynical, left-wing opinions of the tough man he worked with.

Doyle stopped, and smiled lovingly at the photo in his hand. 

“Good times, Bodie, they were good times.”  His voice faded away and there was silence in the room.

“What happened?”

Doyle’s shoulders slumped.  “We were caught by the local gang.  They beat us up.  I was in hospital for three months.  Cieran died.”

Bodie was puzzled.  Nowhere in this idyllic narrative had Doyle mentioned gangs.

“What local gang?  Why did they pick on you?”

“Cieran and I were… well.  I don’t have to spell it out to you.  Normally we were careful, but it was a warm summer night and… we just got caught out.  They found us, and that was it.”

“Caught?”  Bodie wasn’t quite with it.  “Caught doing what?”

“We were sixteen, Bodie.  Look at that picture, and you tell me what he was to me.”

Enlightenment dawned.  He looked at the photograph again, saw how one hand curled around the other’s waist, saw how two heads inclined together, saw how easy and comfortable they were in their skin.

“And you loved him.”

“Yeah.  Would have done anything for him.  But they caught us, and they beat us, really viciously.  There were too many of them, and we didn’t know how to fight.  I don’t remember much, really, just noise and pain and waking up in the hospital.  I missed his funeral and everything.  Never got to say goodbye.”

He stiffened, tensing up.  The memory of their loving, soft, urgent sounds as they both spiralled up towards ecstasy, transmuted into the baying of a mob, rang in his ears.  He shook his head, trying to dispel the memories.

“Anyway, you know the rest.  Woke up, hating, ran wild for a bit, cut one of them up really badly, then got out of Derby.  Went to art school for a bit, got to know one of the coppers when I was working on the barrow, and thought I’d try for the Met.”

“So why the photo, today?”

“Oh, mam’s clearing out my room for Rita’s nipper to stay in.  She says she found this down the back of the drawers, and thought I might like to have it.”  He smiled wryly.  “Not sure she ever really knew what we were to each other.”

There was a small silence.  Doyle stroked one finger over the battered cardboard, head down.

“Hey.  He knew you loved him.  He wouldn’t want you to remember him with sadness, Ray.”

“I know.  Memory – ‘s all I’ve got left of him.”  His eyes filled again, and he gave a huge sniff and scrubbed his hands over his face.

“Sorry, mate.  You’d have done better going for that beer after all.”

“Nah, I’m just glad you could tell me.”   A pause.  “Feel a bit better?”

Doyle looked up, surprise on his face.  “Yeah.  Yeah, I do.  Remembering all the good times, that feels better.  Thanks, Bodie.  You’re a good friend.”

Bodie smiled wryly.  A huge longing suffused him, with the realisation that he wanted to be more than just a good friend.  He wanted what this Cieran had had with Doyle.   He wanted the sunlight, and the happiness, and to be mourned, at the end, with love.

He put out a hand, and gently ruffled the tousled curls. 

“My pleasure, sunshine.”  He could wait.


End file.
